Find Me in Darkness (6 page)

“You told her?” he asked Raine, then sighed as his friend nodded. “Do you remember Christina?” he asked the Callie.

Callie shook her head. “It’s not like that. I know there’s part of Livia inside me, but it’s not memories so much as feelings.” She looked between the men. “Isn’t it that way for her, too?”

“Christina never remembers a thing,” Liam said.

“No.” Mal met Liam’s eyes. “This time, she remembered.”

“What?” He could hear the shock in Liam’s voice.

“Jesus, Mal,” Raine said.

“Wait.” Callie looked between the three men. “I’m a little behind the curve here. She remembers you? How do you know?”

Mal hesitated, but he knew he had to come clean. He looked from Raine to Liam. “I went to her. When I felt her presence, I went to her, just like I always have. And dammit, I had every intention of—” He closed his eyes. “She said my name.” He drew in a breath. “I touched her, Li. I held her. I—”

He cut himself off, remembering. God, he’d taken her in a fucking alley. After so long, and that was how he’d touched her, how he’d claimed her? She deserved so much more, but he hadn’t been able to hold back.

For that matter, she hadn’t been able to either, and the memory brought a hint of a smile to his lips. At least she’d been as crazed as he had. And seeing that—finally having proof that she was still herself even inside this new body, that she was still his—had both ripped him to shreds and given him hope.

Right now, it was that hope to which he clung so desperately.

He looked at his friends. “She was mine.” He spoke firmly, knowing that they all understood exactly what he meant by that. “And everything came back to her. She remembered me. Remembered us. She knew what was happening and why. And then—”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Callie take Raine’s hand and squeeze as tears glistened in her eyes.

“What?” Liam demanded. His voice was businesslike. Practical. But Mal could see the way Liam’s fingers were digging into the arm of the chair.

“She almost lost it.”

“Oh, Christ,” Liam said. “Oh,
fuck
.”

“No.” Mal stood, because he needed to get this out. He’d been thinking—god, how much he’d been thinking over the past two days. “No, I pulled it back. I absorbed it—not the weapon. But her own energy. I backed it down, and the darkness fell away, too.”

“You backed it down?”

Mal nodded at Callie. “It’s what I’m especially good at. Absorbing energy, then turning it around for my own purpose.”

“The way Raine is with electronics.”

Mal nodded. “Takes me hours to talk to a computer, but he can do it in a nano-second.”

“So when you took her energy, it left her exhausted, so the weapon thing couldn’t, um, detonate?”

“Something like that.” He didn’t mention that the effort it had taken was brutal, and that he almost hadn’t managed in time. What he did say was, “That’s when she forgot. Who I was. What had happened to her. To us.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “That was my opportunity. I had the chance to do it right then. To buy us another few decades, maybe a century. But I didn’t take it. I took her memory of what happened in that alley, and I left her there.”

“You left her,” Liam repeated.

“Don’t worry. I kept surveillance on her. No one’s getting to her without going through us.” Mal knew well that the fuerie wanted the weapon back. And that meant that it wanted Christina. And once it knew that she was alive again in the world, it would do anything to reacquire her. To keep her. And, when the time was right, to use the weapon inside her.

Of course, one of the brotherhood, Dante, had the ability to reach out and search for the unique disturbance in the air caused by the fuerie’s energy spectrum. He couldn’t pinpoint them around the globe, but if any of the fuerie were near, he could pick up on their vibration. That skill, however, required Dante to purposefully reach out and was limited geographically. In other words, a handy trick, but with limited usefulness.

To be safe, Mal needed eyes on Christina at all times. And thank goodness she was living in a building with excellent security.

“Fuck, man,” Liam said. “Do you know the goddamn risk—of course you know the risk. What the hell were you thinking?”

Mal ignored the question. “I’ve taken most shifts, and when it’s not me, I’ve kept one of the red teams on her,” he said, referring to the elite ex-military operatives that Phoenix Security, the brotherhood’s front company, kept on the payroll. “But yes, I walked away, and I left her alive. And I’ve come here, and I’ve thought, and I’ve planned.”

He bent to retrieve a fallen chess piece, then sat in the armchair again, the white queen in his hand. “I can’t do it anymore, Liam. And I won’t let anyone else do it, either.”

“Won’t let?” Liam’s brow rose.

“There are other options.” He put the queen on the table. “There are other ways to win this game.”

“Dammit, Mal. We just had this conversation. You know—”

“Hold up, Li,” Raine said. “Could you destroy Jessica? Take a blade to her over and over and over again? Can you even imagine what it’s like to lose her? I can,” he said, tightening his arms around Callie. “And Mal’s had it a thousand times worse. So if he says there’s another way, then we need to at least hear him out.”

He turned to Mal. “We all know she’s dangerous, so I’m not saying that we’re going to jump all over whatever you suggest. But I am saying we should let you make your case.”

As Raine spoke, some of the tightness in Mal’s chest loosened. The brotherhood wasn’t a democracy—what Liam and Mal agreed was law, and where they disagreed, Asher cast the deciding vote. Ash, however, was in transit back from London and not any help at the moment.

But Liam respected Raine. And if nothing else, Mal appreciated his friend having his back.

A moment passed, then another. Then Liam nodded. “All right,” he said, turning from Raine to Mal. “What’s your plan?”

“Wait,” Callie said. “I’m sorry, but I have a few thousand years of catching up to do. What happened to her. Why is she dangerous? And why does killing her buy you decades or centuries?”

Mal met Raine’s eyes. “I thought you told her.”

“Only that you lost Christina. Only what you’ve had to do every time she comes back.”

“I know what Raine told me. You were all part of an elite team that left your world—your dimension—on a mission to stop the fuerie.”

Raine nodded. “You know how I explained that in our dimension, energy is sentient? You don’t need a body?”

“I remember,” Callie said. “I still don’t fully understand how that works, but I remember. And you said that the fuerie was like a malevolent energy.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Liam said.

“But you were chasing it,” Callie continued. “And you didn’t mean to come here—to this dimension or this planet—but there was a crash, and your group and the fuerie ended up here.”

“Those are the high points, yes,” Mal said.

Callie nodded slowly, as if gathering her thoughts. “And there was an Egyptian prince who had visions. He knew you were coming, and he sent a delegation to meet your group. He probably believed you were gods, who knows. But for whatever reason, they all willingly merged with you.”

“With the members of the brotherhood, yes. Not with the fuerie. We merged at a genetic level. It’s what made us human. And our original state—pure energy—is what gives us immortality even as flesh.”

“But that didn’t happen to Livia or Christina? There was a battle, and they never ended up doing the merging thing?”

“Livia, yes,” Mal said. “And, sadly, a few others of our number. But not Christina. She did merge with a human female. I could touch her. Hold her.” Pain raked over him with the memory. “And then they took her.”

“Why?”

Mal tried to answer, but could only shake his head.

“They would have taken anyone,” Liam said gently. “Christina and Jessica had gone out to tend to some wounded humans. They were ambushed. Jessica managed to escape, but they took Christina.”

“We raided their camp that night,” Raine said. “But they had already used her.”

“Used her?”

“Not sexually. As a repository for the weapon. It was the weapon we were hunting even more than the fuerie itself.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing that’s yet been discovered in this world. Dark matter. Scalar energy. The scientists studying those are on the right path.”

“And they made it part of her?”

“Bound it with her essence,” Mal said, drawing a deep breath. “Her energy. Her soul.” He stood, not able to sit while he told this part. “We got her back after the raid, but it was too late. Energy has to be contained in this world—the fuerie had already possessed unwilling humans, and they needed a vessel for the weapon, and they used Christina. Their intent was to keep her restrained, alive but unconscious. And then to destroy her when they accessed the weapon.”

“But you rescued her.”

“It didn’t matter.” Liam stood and moved to Mal’s side. “She couldn’t contain it. The power, the intensity. It was too much of a shock to her system. She started to lose control.”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Mal said. “My own powers weren’t honed yet, and even if I had been able to absorb her energy, it was too far gone. And she was like us—I thought that the phoenix fire would regenerate her,” he added, referring to the particular method by which the brotherhood was immortal. Death could take them, but it could not keep them, and they were rendered to ash in the phoenix flame, and then made mortal once again. “I thought that I could stop the weapon by stopping her,” he explained. “I thought that she would come back to me.”

He tried to shut out the memories. Him consoling her. Him promising to keep her safe, to keep the world safe.

And then that final, agonizing moment when he’d thrust his fire sword through her heart, and watched as life and blood spilled from her. He’d waited. Waited for the fire. Waited for her to come back to him so that they could start over. Soothing. Calming. Keeping her steady. Keeping her safe.

Except there was no fire. She didn’t burn. She didn’t regenerate.

She simply died.

And he was the one who had killed her.

He told Callie that, his stomach twisting as a single tear snaked down her cheek.

“We still don’t understand why. The weapon, its energy. Somehow it kept her from being immortal. And I lost her. It was a long time before I found her again.”

“Three-sixty-five AD,” Liam said. “We were back in Egypt. And Mal sensed her presence.”

“I didn’t understand it,” he said. “I’d believed she was lost for good. But I knew it was her. And I hoped. God help me, I hoped.”

“She was reincarnated?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“What happened?” Callie’s words were a whisper.

“How well do you know Egyptian history?” Liam asked.

She shook her head.

“In the year 365, an earthquake leveled the Port of Alexandria. More than fifty-thousand people lost their lives.”

Callie swallowed, then licked her lips. “Christina?”

“She didn’t know me,” Mal said. “Didn’t know herself.” He drew in a breath with the memory. “I recognized her only by her essence. It was pure—undiluted—but she was in a new body, beautiful and yet unfamiliar. I went to her, and I hoped beyond reason.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t realize how far gone she was—how fucking impotent I was—until it was too late.”

“It would have been worse if you hadn’t acted when you did,” Raine said quietly.

“Believe me,” Mal said. “It was worse. And it just keeps happening over and over again. Her returning. Me killing.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” Callie said, then frowned.

“What?” Raine asked.

“Nothing. I was just wondering about before. I mean, she’s an adult. So why didn’t Mal become aware of her when she was a child?”

Mal shook his head. “I think that she is growing up in a new body, making a new life and new memories, and the weapon is growing along with her. I don’t become aware until it has reached the point of being operational.”

Callie nodded. “And we know it is operational,” she said. “Because of what you felt tonight. And because of Egypt.”

“Exactly. I wasn’t as strong in Egypt,” Mal said. “And she didn’t remember. Things have changed. Everything has changed.” He looked at Liam as he spoke, watched his friend shake his head slowly. “Dammit, Liam. I can help her fight it down. And if she remembers, she’s going to be fighting, too. She’s going to have something now to fight for.”

“Like you do.”

“Hell, yes,” Mal said.

Liam scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “It’s not just a question of control, Mal, and you damn well know it. The fuerie want her. They want to use her, and they will do whatever they can to reacquire her.”

“Why do you think I have her under surveillance?”

“It’s too dangerous and you know it. Our mission has always been to reacquire the weapon and either render it inert or get it the hell out of this dimension. And in case you’ve forgotten, we’re stranded here. Until we find the final piece of the amulet, we have no power to bind the weapon or to get back across the void.”

“The last time she manifested, we had only three of the seven amulets. Now we have six.” He glanced at Callie and Raine. “We know the seventh exists—hell, we’ve touched it—and we are too close to end this now and send her back to death and waiting. Christ, Liam, it could be another century before I find her again.”

“What is a century to us but a blink of an eye?” Liam asked.

“It’s torture without your mate beside you,” Mal said harshly. “But you wouldn’t know that.”

Liam dragged his fingers through his hair, his eyes dark and tortured. “Do you think I don’t understand? I do. And even though it’s horrific, the truth is that a world without Christina is safe. We need the amulet first. Otherwise, with her alive, it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen. Either because the fuerie grabs her and uses her, or because she’s not strong enough to keep it down.”

“She is. I’ll make sure she is.”

“Dammit, Mal—”

“No. You listen to me. She is strong, damn strong. Even after all these years, her essence hasn’t dissipated. It’s still her in there, fully and completely. Generation after generation, she has kept the core of Christina together. Even Livia couldn’t manage that,” he added, nodding toward Callie, who nodded.